European Decorative Arts Storage Renovation

FAIN: PF-266774-19

Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI 48202-4008)
Barbara Heller (Project Director: January 2019 to present)

The rehousing of 625 objects, currently held in eleven temporary storage sites, from the Detroit Institute of Arts’ European Sculpture and Decorative Arts collection.  The items would be moved into a redesigned storage space to alleviate overcrowding of collections, accommodate future collection growth, absorb vibrations due to earthquakes, and reduce exposure to ultraviolet light.

The Detroit Institute of Arts requests NEH support to renovate and upgrade a storage room to house a portion of the DIA's outstanding collection of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. These works are presently stored in eleven separate storage rooms throughout the museum. The project involves implementing environmental improvements and lighting upgrades, and installing necessary storage equipment, including powder-coated cabinets and pallet racking. Works of art will be moved into their assigned renovated, acclimatized and newly-designed storage rooms, unpacked, reorganized and properly rehoused to ensure their long term conservation and preservation. This will facilitate display, loans, scholarly study and research, photography and make the collections more accessible to the public.

Media Coverage

Friday Operations and Strategy Group Updates (Review)
Author(s): Salvador Salort Pons
Publication: DIA Director's Weekly Newsletter to the Board of Directors and Staff
Date: 3/17/2023
Abstract: Dear colleagues, I hope you will enjoy this week’s staff email, which includes notes from staff travel, many interesting insights into our coworkers’ fantastic work here, and perhaps closest to my heart, the many ways in which the DIA supports education and artists. How we connect with our community is important to the DIA, and I deeply appreciate the efforts I see every day to continue and build on those relationships. Enjoy! OUR PEOPLE Megan Reddicks Pignataro, research assistant in Collections Management, recently spoke on two roundtable panels at the Renaissance Society of America conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 9–11. These included discussions among museum colleagues from across the US about the DIA's ongoing European sculpture and decorative arts storage grant work sponsored by the NEH, as well as a broad discussion among junior and senior academics and researchers about the role and impact of studying, teaching, and exhibiting early modern art (1350–1700) today.

Associated Products

VCESDA Virtual Annual Meeting: Magnificence in Steel (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: VCESDA Virtual Annual Meeting: Magnificence in Steel
Abstract: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff gave a virtual lectures inspired by what she learned about the DIA armor collection as part of the NEH SCHC ESDA Storage Upgrade Project. "Magnificence in Steel", was on Saturday, September 26 for the Visiting Committee for European Sculpture and Decorative Arts (VCESDA), one of the DIA supporting Auxiliaries. Its focused was the specific discoveries Dr. Kirchhoff made while examining and studying the armor from the estate of William Randolph Hearst. The NEH SCHC grant was acknowledged during the lecture, as these examinations would not have taken place without this grant. .
Author: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff
Date: 09/26/2020
Location: Virtual Meeting (Online)
Primary URL: https://www.dia.org/events/vcesda-virtual-annual-meeting

Lunch and Learn (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Lunch and Learn
Abstract: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff gave a virtual lectures inspired by what she has learned about our armor collection during this NEH SCHC project. The first was a “Lunch and Learn” was given for Associate level members and above, which focused on armor represented in the DIA collection including sculptures, paintings, prints and armor. The NEH SCHC grant was acknowledged during the lecture, as these examinations would not have taken place without this grant.
Author: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff
Date: 06/11/2020
Location: Virtual Meeting (online)

Puzzling Paintings in Light: A Series of Elizabethan Stained-Glass Panels at the DIA (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Puzzling Paintings in Light: A Series of Elizabethan Stained-Glass Panels at the DIA
Abstract: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff has given four virtual lectures inspired by the research undertaken and new cataloging protocols implemented during this NEH SCHC project. The NEH SCHC grant was acknowledged during each of the lectures, as these examinations would not have taken place without this grant. In June 2021, Dr. Kirchhoff presented “Puzzling Paintings in Light: A Series of Elizabethan Stained-Glass Panels at the DIA,” a talk sharing a series of 14 heraldic stained-glass panels from the Elizabethan manor of Warkworth in Northamptonshire that reside at the DIA. These complex renaissance paintings in light embody sixteenth-century innovations in the glazier’s art as well as venerable techniques that date to the high Middle Ages. These works were among the 39 stained glass objects that Dr. Kirchhoff examined alongside Megan Reddicks Pignataro and Allison Slenker in December 2020 and January 2021.
Author: Kirchhoff, Chassica
Date: 06/15/2021
Location: Detroit Institute of Arts

Detroit Steel: Re-examining and Rehousing the Arms and Armor Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts (Article)
Title: Detroit Steel: Re-examining and Rehousing the Arms and Armor Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts
Author: Kirchhoff, Chassica
Abstract: DIA armor made the cover of the July 2021 issue of ICOMAM Magazine (the biannual publication of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History). Dr. Kirchhoff was invited by the editors, Dr. Jeffrey Forgeng of the Worchester Museum of Art and former Tower Armouries conservator, Kay Brown, to contribute a short overview of the DIA’s martial collection and the NEH-funded research and collections care work. It is hoped that being featured in this publication will not only draw attention to these amazing objects but invite future interest, research, and collaboration from the international community of colleagues who specialize in arms and armor studies.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://icomam.mini.icom.museum/the-magazine/#
Primary URL Description: ICOM International Committee for Museums and Collections of Arms and Military History. ICOMAM publishes an online publication, called The MAGAZINE, twice a year about the work of our members. It includes items of news, information about exhibitions, new acquisitions, reports of congresses as well as short articles.
Secondary URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tGlk8oo1AaJ16dPCN6FmkT8F9UVQCFGr/view
Secondary URL Description: Cover image and the article starts on page 15
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: ICOMAM Magazine, Issue 25, June 2021
Publisher: ICOMAM Magazine

DIA’s first female armor specialist digs into history to reveal the secrets behind medieval suits (Article)
Title: DIA’s first female armor specialist digs into history to reveal the secrets behind medieval suits
Author: Webb, Jessica Johnson
Abstract: Roadtrippers Magazine featured an article, dated July 23, 2021, about DIA’s first female armor specialist who “digs into history to reveal secrets behind medieval suits." Suits of armor, popular in late 15th- and early 16th-century Europe, are usually associated with men. But the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), is trying to change that—in 2020, Chassica “Chaz” Kirchhoff, one of only a few known female armor specialists in the world, became the first to join DIA’s curatorial staff. DIA’s arms and armor collection is among the best in North America. Much of it was loaned to the museum in the 1940s by publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose foundation made a gift of the works following his death in 1951. Kirchhoff says that suits of armor conjure the sense of a person long-dead. “In the case of arms and armors, these works bore witness to significant events and historical experiences, not only of war, but also courtly pageantry like tournaments,” she says.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/dia-suits-of-armor/
Primary URL Description: Article about armor, wealth power and masculinity, impermeable surfaces, the power of wearable objects, and outlines three main armor types: battle, tournament, and parade armor.
Access Model: Open
Format: Magazine
Publisher: Roadtrippers Magazine

Steel Towns: Armor, Artistry, and Innovation in the Renaissance (Exhibition)
Title: Steel Towns: Armor, Artistry, and Innovation in the Renaissance
Curator: Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff
Abstract: Précis From around 1400 until the early 1600s, armorers were part of complex networks of artists, tradesmen, agents, and patrons that animated burgeoning artistic centers both north and south of the Alps. The collaborations and innovations that forged steel plate armor sparked creativity across many areas of the arts and sciences, and fostered prosperity for the steel towns of Renaissance Europe. Exhibition Summary During the Renaissance, plate armor was more than a defensive technology for war or knightly sport. It was a meaningful, multi-media form of kinetic sculpture, combining high fashion with cutting-edge engineering. The most luxurious and innovative armors commanded astronomical prices and—when worn in courtly pageants, in the tournament arena, or on the battlefield—participated in unforgettable events. This exhibition seeks to resituate armorers within the story of European art from the 15th through 17th centuries and to trace the ways that their artistic networks shaped civic landscapes and urban communities. Armorers’ workshops served as sites of intersection, collaboration, and inspiration for artists and craftspeople working in other media, including precious metalwork, printmaking, painting, and cutting-edge mechanical technologies like clockmaking. Numerous exhibitions have invited visitors to explore the exciting world of knightly sport embodied in jousts and tournaments. Recent blockbuster shows in the US, the UK, and Europe have explored how important patrons like Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519), King Henry VIII of England (1491–1547), or the Habsburg kings of Spain commissioned armors of unprecedented visual splendor and technological complexity, and how such wearable art participated in performances of power. However, few exhibitions have focused on armorers’ places at the centers of dynamic artistic networks, and compelling stories of communities renowned for the virtuosity of their smiths and luxury steel works they produced.
Year: 2022
Primary URL Description: Exhibition was approved and will be in 2027-8. Not yet posted publicly.

Divesting/Dismembering: Storage Findings in the Disassembly of Armor (Article)
Title: Divesting/Dismembering: Storage Findings in the Disassembly of Armor
Author: Livingston Bailin
Author: Megan Reddicks Pignataro
Author: Chassica Kirchhoff
Abstract: In 2019, the Detroit Institute of Arts was awarded a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to renovate one of the museum’s European sculpture and decorative arts storage facilities. Integrally, it also established an opportunity to study intensively collection material housed long-term in storage. An understudied group of armors, previously in the William Randolph Hearst collection, comprised a major facet of the work. Until recently, these steel defenses were stored on custom-made wooden mannequins from the early twentieth century. The case study on which this article focuses illuminates the authors’ work undressing and dismembering one of these wood and metal bodies: a composite Maximilian-style armor (56.124.1-.10). Armor collection by patrons like Hearst, whose acquisitions decorated the halls of his vast New York townhome and Welsh castle of St. Donat’s, was a manipulation of bodies analogous to Dr. Frankenstein’s assembly of his own infamous monster. Collectors compensated for missing or incomplete elements with limbs poached from comparable period armors or, in some cases, with facsimiles likely crafted by Raymond Bartel, an armorer and Metropolitan Museum conservator turned Hearst employee. Disassembling and componentizing this armor into discrete body segments allowed the team to assess specific future conservation and safe-housing needs, isolate historical from modern pastiche, identify makers and/or regional origins, characterize craftsmanship details, and clarify the objects’ contexts of use. The authors’ work not only served the DIA’s collections care mission, but also revealed valuable information that would have otherwise remained undiscovered.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/dia/current
Primary URL Description: Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Volume 97, Number 1 2023. Wearable Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A Journal of the Detroit Institute of Arts. In addition to the paper volume’s circulation among DIA members and availability through the museum shop, subscribers to the publication or institutional subscriptions to the press are able to access digital copies online.
Secondary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728712
Secondary URL Description: Downloadable copy of the article.
Access Model: Subscriptions. Downloadable copies are available for purchase and, after five years, the articles are indexed and made available in full-text via JStor.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 97, Number 1 2023
Publisher: University of Chicago

Embodying the Edges of Empires: German Armors in the Hungarian Style for Ottoman and Habsburg Courts (Article)
Title: Embodying the Edges of Empires: German Armors in the Hungarian Style for Ottoman and Habsburg Courts
Author: Chassica F. Kirchhoff
Abstract: Near the end of the 1500s, smiths in the south-German city of Augsburg forged a group of ornate armors in the so-called Hungarian style meant for prominent commanders in both the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires. Attributable to the circle of Anton Peffenhauser (ca. 1525–1603)—among the last in Augsburg’s lineage of illustrious armorers—the armors’ articulated breastplates and, in some cases, distinctive Zischägge (lobster tail) helmets echo flexible defenses worn by Hussars, Central European cavalry whose nimble tactics and flamboyant dress inspired both the Ottoman elite and the Habsburg courts. The particularized forms of these armors articulated the multivalent identities of their wearers, while their virtuosic construction and sumptuous, etched-and-gilt decoration bear the stylistic hallmarks of Augsburg’s erudite network of armorers and etchers. Through their associations with war, pageantry, and the economy of gifts exchanged between Vienna and Constantinople, these armors embodied the complex visual and cultural landscapes of east-central Europe for early modern wearers and viewers. This article will focus on and move outward from two rare and exceptionally luxurious half armors by Peffenhauser’s circle now in Detroit and Philadelphia. Both once belonged to internationally prominent members of the Khevenhüller family from the Austrian province of Carinthia, near the border of present-day Slovenia, in whose ancestral arsenals they remained until the 20th century. The article will contextualize the armors within their rich martial and visual cultures, inviting readers to consider their significance as meaningful wearable objects of not only defense, but diplomacy, desire, and display.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/dia/current
Primary URL Description: The Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 97, Number 1 2023. Wearable Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A Journal of the Detroit Institute of Arts. In addition to the paper volume’s circulation among DIA members and availability through the museum shop, subscribers to the publication or institutional subscriptions to the press are able to access digital copies online
Secondary URL: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728711
Secondary URL Description: Downloadable article.
Access Model: Subscription. Downloadable copies are also available for purchase and, after five years, the articles are indexed and made available in full-text via JStor.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 97, Number 1
Publisher: University of Chicago

Renaissance Society of America annual meeting conference (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Renaissance Society of America annual meeting conference
Author: Hood Museum at Dartmouth
Author: Megan Reddicks Pignataro
Author: Getty
Author: Philadelphia Museum of Art
Author: Toledo Museum of Art
Abstract: Installations of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque art are common in art museums, yet many displays are static and standardized. Altarpieces hang flat and open, sculpture is isolated in cases against walls, and decorative arts are consigned to basements or hallways. Such displays are counter to the experiential nature of much of early modern art. Meanwhile, objects such as Filipino ivories of Christian subjects are often presented as isolated outliers—if they leave storage at all—because they do not fall within traditional art historical frameworks. In this roundtable, we consider ways in which museum professionals who work with early modern art can tell diverse or complex stories with predominately Euro-centric collections through research and contextualization. While new acquisitions can supplement museum's refocused narratives, deep collection research is essential to reassessing the stories these objects tell. Moving away from staid interpretations based on style and attribution, the curators and researchers in this roundtable explore reinvigorating early modern objects in museums through contextual display, digital supplements, and community engagement. Each presenter will draw attention to various aspects of early modern collections, including manuscripts, sculpture, painting, architecture, and printmaking. Session participants hold positions at various institutions across North America, ranging from academic art museums to large municipal art museums. Each participant will present a new piece of research, object in the collection, or installation, followed by roundtable discussion. Critical issues the roundtable will address include involving local communities in installations; engaging with social media; researching diverse histories; and recovering the work of marginalized makers and subjects.
Date: 03/10/2023
Primary URL: https://www.rsa.org/page/RSASanJuan2023Archive
Primary URL Description: Roundtable discussion among representatives from the Detroit Institute of Art and the four other museums listed above
Conference Name: Re-envisioning Early Modern Collections

When is a Sword Also a Calendar (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: When is a Sword Also a Calendar
Writer: Merlin Chappuis and Chassica Kirchhoff
Director: Detroit Institute of Arts
Producer: Detroit Institute of Arts Audio Visual
Abstract: Learners of all ages can follow along as gallery teacher Merlin Chappuis talks with DIA curator and armor expert Dr. Chassica Kirchhoff about a beautiful and surprising sword in this Art Byte about the German Calendar Sword Blade, (Acc. # 56.186), gift of Ralph R. Hotchkiss, which is usually on view.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSGkJlksaOQ.
Primary URL Description: DIA YouTube Art Byte
Access Model: Open access
Format: Video

The Art of Armor Symposium (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: The Art of Armor Symposium
Author: Chassica Kirchoff
Abstract: The symposium was a fundraising benefit for History Live Northeast, a New England-based nonprofit that aims to “provide high quality, factual, and engaging interactive living history demonstrations and lectures to K-12 students. Working with teachers and schools to supplement, enhance, or even replace parts of a curriculum, at no cost to schools.”
Date Range: February 10, 2022
Primary URL: https://youtu.be/hWG82vSypgg?si=jt50iErbJbLpaYJxa
Primary URL Description: The talk shared many discoveries and objects related to the NEH SCHS storeroom upgrade project.

The ‘Work’ of Art: Art Writing, Curating, Exhibitions, Display (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The ‘Work’ of Art: Art Writing, Curating, Exhibitions, Display
Abstract: The talk was about the NEH SCHC ESDA storage upgrade project and the range of research and design that went into the renovation.
Author: Megan Reddicks Pignataro
Date: 11/09/2022
Location: Temple University, Philadelphia, PA

Curious Objects: Thirty-five Saxon Suits of Armor, with Chassica Kirchhoff (Article)
Title: Curious Objects: Thirty-five Saxon Suits of Armor, with Chassica Kirchhoff
Author: Michael Diaz-Griffith
Author: Benjamin Miller
Abstract: It’s kinetic sculpture, it’s haute couture, it’s . . . armor! This month, Ben speaks with Chassica Kirchhoff, assistant curator of European sculpture and decorative arts at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), about a group of metal suits from the 1500s that were worn in jousting tournaments by the dukes of Saxony. Emblematic of the feisty Protestant state’s chivalric past and supreme examples of Saxon metalworking prowess, the suits of armor by the 1700s had come to represent “a fulcrum between the early modern past and the Enlightenment present,” Kirchoff says. Shortly thereafter they went on display at the famous Green Vault in Dresden, a precursor of modern museums, and several are currently at the DIA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/curious-objects-saxon-armor-chassica-kirchhoff/
Primary URL Description: The Magazine Antiques podcast focuses on a group of Saxon renaissance armors that includes some now in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Secondary URL: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5vIz62eIdVhV6KjhElAUZV?go=1&sp_cid=4ecbb3678c0124c8383ccb34b2562ab8&utm_source=embed_player_p&utm_medium=desktop&nd=1&dlsi=fc2c072aa462462f
Secondary URL Description: Spotify Podcast on the Thirty-five Saxon Suits of Armor, with Chassica Kirchhoff.
Access Model: Open.
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: The Magazine Antiques, 100 years 1922-2022
Publisher: The Magazine Antiques Media, LLC

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